It's a Wonderful Afterlife
by VOID cowboy
Summary: The afterlife is weird. It has Giant Fish, Talking Animals, Eccentric Gods, Actual Androids, Terrifying Monsters, and strange Magic Stuff everyone of importance seems to have. It's still hard for me to accept that I ended up in Bleach instead of Gintama. OC/Insert fic, Pre-canon as in WAY Back, Slight AU, Rating May change.


**AN: Hello World! After being a lurker here for... well quite a while, rereading Walk Two Lifetimes and Soul Chess (Good reads the all of them, check them out if you have the time) and being plagued by this idea for a few weeks, I'm trying my hand at the old OC Insert (loosely based on a few people I know, including myself) Story. Do me a favor and tell me what you think.**

* * *

 **Prelude**

Waking up one day and realizing you're stuck in the Bleach Universe is not fun and extremely jarring. Outside of the Royal Court, far from the safety of the first ten districts is a Dog Eat Dog World where you would eventually have to make morally questionable decisions just to see the next day. It's a place where lying, cheating, stealing, and killing is the norm, and where even children are forced to do anything they can to survive. People can and will eat you in this world, and the further you go, the stranger and more dangerous things get. It wouldn't be a stretch to call it Hell, and that's where someone like me, who had half baked knowledge of one of the most horribly ended manga in history, ended up in.

Though surviving the place is much simpler than you think. There's a special area, Rukongai also known as hell, that surrounds Seireitei and all you really have to do is avoid it like the plague. That means either landing within the great white city itself or waking up so far away that you have no idea you're in the Bleach Universe in the first place.

* * *

 **Chapter 1**

In the beginning, I thought the Afterlife looked a lot like a little corner of the world called Prags.

I awoke at the entrance of a cave. It was a beautiful cave, overlooking a beautiful blend of blue, green, and white that stretched from horizon to horizon and filled my entire world with wonderful color. A lake glowed with the purest blue as light swam through the water as easily as it would slip through glass. Mountains all around wore crowns of white that reflected the rays of the sun or were clothed in the vibrancy of life, as trees spread their canopies to hide the sheer cliffs. The sky was clear, the same shade as the water's surface and there was not a cloud in the wide blue sky. Even as the sun's light burst throughout the cave at the height of the day, there was no sweltering heat and though snow fell on the mountains surrounding the lake, the air lacked the sharp chill of winter.

And that was what was just outside the cave.

Even the inside seemed overly welcoming. The interior was filled with a sand-like substance that was almost soft to the touch while the cave itself seemed to be structured in such a way that light naturally filled the entrance. Deeper into the cavern, there was a sudden incline, the path into the cave slowing downward before setting into a flat area and then suddenly sloping upwards once again. There was only so much I could see despite the sunshine, but something told me there was something even deeper within the cave.

It called to me, almost begging me to go deeper in...

I brushed away that thought for the moment. There was just so much of the world outside left to explore and the Spirit of Adventure, Foolishness my mother would always call it, demanded that I go outside.

Maybe I would check it out that afternoon.

* * *

I returned to the cave about a couple days later, happy, exhausted, and somewhat confused.

All I could say was that this place was my kind of Heaven.

Oh and it definitely _wasn't_ Italy.

The trees were wrong... well kind of.

There were ferns higher up the mountain and those things were scattered everywhere, but the ones closer to the lake seem a bit more foreign. They looked, well like ordinary trees. Specifically they were types you would find in the jungle rather than at the foot of mountains. If my eyes weren't fooling me, I could even make out some of those trees having fruit hidden high up near their canopies. I wasn't an expert in biology, but even I knew that trees like that like tropical climates better, and the obvious snow caps on the mountains meant that this place was anything but.

Another thing; I was sure that the Pragser Wildsee lacked giant fish.

Let me be clear, when I said giant, I meant GIANT. I didn't really see a fish like that per se, and thank goodness I didn't because a skeleton I found closer to the forest than the lake was wider than I was tall. I didn't know if any freshwater fish in the world actually grew to that size but I knew that if there really was something that large lurking in the clear waters then it would be very dangerous to try and take a dip. Well, maybe I could stick to the shallower waters, certain areas of the lake had beaches after all, but the deeper areas were definitely off limits until I was sure that it was safe.

That sure was a shame, I was looking forward to diving into the clear water too.

One the subject to size, that was another problem I had; apparently I was a child again, along with everything that implied. I was honestly kind of bummed when I realized it, I thought that the world was somehow bigger, more bright and beautiful, but minutes after I exited the cave, I came to realize that my hands were way too small, my limbs much too short, and my endurance -something I built up after trying my hand at triathlon- totally gone. I still had the energy of a child, and that meant that I was good for short burst of activity, but in the long run, I made horrible progress and got tired _way too easily._ On the upside, being in a child's body apparently meant that I had gained regained an ability I thought I had long lost...

I could once again sleep absolutely anywhere: a fact I confirmed when I climbed up a tree the first night to look up at the stars and woke up lying in the branches the next morning. It was nice to know that despite how everything changed, climbing trees were as natural to me as it had always been, and this time, there was no one around to call me a monkey. A bonus was that it wasn't even cold that night; it was a strange place where the air was cool in the day but warm when night fell.

The painful reality known as hunger made itself known on the second day, and this was when the strange climate surrounding the lake helped me out. It didn't take long to find what looked like a fruit tree a stone's throw away from the lake's shores, and that meant that taking the strange fruit and washing it was easy.

The fruit itself was weird; it looked like a grape but it grew on a tree. Not even a branch or a vine, but the little balls of goodness looked like they clung to the bark's surface like a bunch of warts on the poor tree. They weren't that hard to harvest and, as luck would have it, they actually tasted a bit like grapes. There were seeds too, large ones, and the skin was difficult to eat, but those grape-like things actually tasted like grapes when you got right down to it, so it was a pleasant breakfast all in all.

That day I found that the water was still one of my best friends there was a wide assortment of freshwater fish that frequented the shallows.

They were everywhere, it seemed, some larger than others and some more numerous but all there, and all unafraid of something like a human entering their waters. They seemed just as curious about me as I was about them, and several couldn't help themselves but approach when I sat down in the shallows and brought myself neck deep into the water. They weren't as colorful as saltwater fish, most of them being a more subdued shade of greens, grays, oranges, and browns, but there was a certain wonder that came with seeing a fish swim so close that I didn't care. It honestly made me want to try fishing again, even if I was never really good at it the first time around. I didn't have any proper equipment either, but I was sure I could get around that given some time.

When afternoon came I discovered I had a stomach of steel when I didn't vomit even after drinking the lake's water without boiling it, or eating fruit that I didn't properly wash. Bowel movement was thankfully normal no matter what I ate or drank, which was fun since I found another tree, with nuts this time, and helped myself to those exotic treats. Yes, I was fully aware that eating random things from trees and drinking lake water was generally discouraged, but this was Heaven folks.

More than that, this was my personal Heaven, complete with everything I could ever wish for: sweet solitude, the wonder and simplicity of nature, and the opportunity to experience it through the wide eyes of a child.

I was perfectly content with spending eternity here, getting lost in the day by day until forever finally ended.

* * *

Looking back, I should have thought something was strange after my seventh fish.

Children shouldn't have been able to eat seven whole fish, especially when each of them were easily the size of my whole arm. A child shouldn't have been able to consume baskets of fruit every meal and feel anything but bloated. A child shouldn't be able to walk up and down a mountain without tiring. Hell, if I was thinking straight, I would have noticed that a child shouldn't be able to sleep naked in a cave and wake up without a cold.

But then again, I was already dead so I didn't really worry about the little things.

This place was impossible enough as it was, so I chose to ignore all the impossibilities inherent in the experience and resolved to enjoy the present moment.

It took months of preparation but eventually I had a routine. I would wake up, a bit before daybreak eat yesterday's leftovers. That meal was usually just an assortment of fruit I had gathered the day before, a bunch of weird grapes, some nuts, I think I had some papaya and mango there, and when that was done, I would go gather up some more. Of course, I would check that the fire pit was totally cold first before going down the mountain and foraging.

I had a bunch of equipment now too. Sure, most of them were made from vines that grew closer to the lakeside and strong sticks I could find basically EVERYWHERE, but they got the job done. Especially the baskets; those things made gathering the fruits and herbs so much easier.

Anyway, after successfully fulling up those baskets, there were two of them, I'd bring them back up to the cave and run to the lakeside. The fish traps I managed to make made fishing a possibility. The fish I usually ate came from those traps, made with twine and sticks but at that point, I had finally managed to make a strong, reliable, and thin enough line to try fishing in the deeper areas of the lake. I didn't catch anything at that point, but it gave me something to do after the hustle and bustle of preparing for the day... and making lunch.

Fried fish and fruit was quick to go stale, but that was what the herbs littering the forest were for. It didn't really change much in he long run, but at the very least I didn't have to eat the exact same thing every single day. I could manage a different meal but cooking for a week was a challenge even for me. It wasn't ideal, but I was never went hungry between the fish in the lake and the fruit of the forest and that was what mattered.

In the afternoons, I took the time to explore the forest, the other mountains, and even venture deeper into the cave, but I didn't really find much in the latter areas. The herbs were very much a plus, they made cooking fun and things edible, but the mountains were a bit too cold at a certain height and the inner part of my cave was just more cave. There were animal bones, some really big ones, scattered in the inner most area but whatever lived there before was dead and long gone.

I had the most fun fishing.

Mostly because the fish I caught from the deeper parts of the lake were HUGE.

The first time I met a live one was the most fun.

It had just been a quiet afternoon and I had just finished preparing my first line. I had a little bit of fish and fruit left over so that went on a makeshift hook, it was convenient rock, before I threw it as far as I could into the lake.

The wait was surprisingly short. Not even a minute had passed before I felt the first tug. I guess calling it just a tug would do it a disservice, I could tell it was a fish, or at least a living thing, since it pulled at the line so hard that I was surprised the twine didn't snap.

It came too suddenly. One moment I was seated at place I prepared at at shore and the next I was being dragged into the shallows by a force that should have easily broken the line. Surprise took me for a couple of seconds before I planted my feet into the mud and pulled for all I was worth and for a moment the fish and I stood still. I tried to dig my feet deeper into the mud but I wasn't even allowed to do than when the fish pulled even harder and took me under.

There was no holding onto the line at that point. I was too deep and obviously the fish was too strong for me to drag back to shore. I definitely didn't want to risk being dragged into the open water; though I was submerged, the surface was just an inch from the top of my head and I definitely didn't want to make it worse. I didn't think twice, the moment my head was dunked underwater I released the line and conceded my defeat.

But not before taking a good look at my opponent.

I wouldn't be ashamed to say that I was glad that I was underwater, that way even if someone was around, no one would be able to tell that I wet myself. The fish was big, even from such a long distance, even in the blur of the water, I could tell that it could have easily swallowed me whole. It was a startling black, a massive blob in the middle of the clear waters that stood out so much that it was almost insulting. It didn't need to hide from anything in the lake, not when it was so clear that it dwarfed anything else that might have posed a threat.

And then it turned its giant fishy head towards me and I just lost it.

As fast as my little limbs would take me, I turned around and flew towards the shore. Everything was a blur, one moment I was floundering towards dry land and the next I had collapsed at the entrance of my little cave, still high from the rush of having been almost eaten alive by a giant fish I was trying to catch.

I couldn't help it, there was no stopping the desperate and resigned belly laugh that escaped me and echoed within the hole in the mountain. There was just no other way of reacting to the absurdity of it all, that this crazy isolated place was my afterlife, and most certainly not the Heaven I expected.

Last time I checked, you didn't need to fear for your life in Paradiso. It could have been Purgatory, but this place was a cross between a valley and a lake; not the top of some high plateau. It definitely wasn't the Garden of Eden either, I should know, I explored enough of the area to confirm that there was no river anywhere near here. A terrifying thought crept from the back of my mind; this could have easily been Hell, but the place seem much... well too nice to be the backdrop to eternal damnation.

It couldn't have been reincarnation either since you started as a baby -I guess?- and as far as I could tell, I was the only human for miles.

Maybe humanity as a whole was wrong; that despite the crazy things we could come up with, the afterlife was nothing like what we expected.

I shook my head, dirtying my damp hair with the soft sand that lined the floor of my cave. There was no real reason to worry now, was there? I've been living perfectly fine by myself, and if this was my fate for all eternity then I would just have to make the best of it. It was still fun, playing around, living off the land, and even meeting that giant catfish, so at the very least my daily life wouldn't grow stale.

Who knew what surprised the world would have in store for me.

But first I needed to make dinner first.

And just like that a couple of years had past since I arrived in this wilderness.

* * *

Change came, like it was wont to do, accompanied by a woman.

"Would you hold still for a moment? You're not making this any easier, you know?" She asked, looking down on me the way a mother would her misbehaving child. And honestly she had the right to, given how we met. "What made you think that trying to catch Namazu-san was a good idea?"

Hmm... Japanese? It's been a while since I've heard those words...

Though that took a backseat and I couldn't help but silently blush in embarrassment. I'll admit that I may have gotten a bit too ambitious that day but no matter how much I tried to catch that giant demon catfish over the past few months it always ended up in a stalemate. I was just feeding it smaller fish by that point, but even if I couldn't drag it to the shore before it overpowered me, or more recently before the line actually breaking, it didn't really drag me too deep or get close enough to hurt me.

Until that day of course.

The tug of war started like it normally did, but the moment that we reached the stalemate, the demon catfish decided that it would want to try a bit human that day. I didn't think that it was possible, but it started to behave like a fisherman rather than a fish, letting go for a bit that I lost my footing before pulling me into the open water. It didn't waste any time, the moment it got close enough to touch, it opened it's monstrous mouth and went for my arm.

I couldn't feel he pain of my arm breaking through the panic. I was lucky enough that it decided to let go when I punched it in the face, but I took my painfully crushed arm and made for the shoreline as quickly as I could. I knew I couldn't beat an angry monster fish in a race, but just as I was about to lose all hope, she appeared.

Like an angel sent by God Himself, she picked me up from the water and glided towards the shore where she began to dress my broken arm. She had long black hair, eyes that glowed bright purple in the light, and had a face that didn't look a day after twenty four. She wore clothes that seemed more suited to a ninja, a tight body suit but from the backpack she had with her, she took a set of bandages and began applying soothing salve to where my arm shattered.

"Thank you." I had to whisper, probably it was the metal shock or the adrenaline but my voice wasn't as loud as it usually was. "For helping me, I mean."

"Oh, it's no trouble ,little one, though I would have thought that children knew better than to play in the waters where something like Namazu-san lurked." She replied motherly, but there was no hiding the amusement there. She seemed torn between laughing at the predicament she found me in and chewing me out for doing something so stupid. "Alone no less; don't children tend to flock together in places like this? Had I not seen you struggle, I would have thought you were offering yourself to the fish."

"I've been alone, for the most part, actually." I was wary of her, a stranger, but if she meant me any harm, I didn't think she would be willing to treat me, or save me from the fish. "Before I met you, I thought that I was the only human here."

"Hmmm... interesting." There was a sinister glimmer in her eyes, but it disappeared as quickly as it came, the gentle expression on her face clearing away that impression like the sun emerging from fading thunderheads. "And you have not encountered anything strange while living here? At the very least, you do know that you've been freed from your mortal coil, that you have died, yes?"

I was getting an ominous feeling here.

"I'm not really sure what you're talking about, but I do understand that I've passed on." I told her honestly. I didn't know what was happening and it looked like the best way to get information was to come clean with my situation. "I've been here for a few years now, and I haven't really met anyone. I'm not strong enough to go beyond the mountains so I thought that this was everything there was. And the only strange thing I've seen is that demon catfish over there."

"This well, as beautiful as it is, isn't the entire world, little frog." There was a laugh there, but with that was kindness and relief maybe? "Still, it's surprising that you've managed to survive for this long, alone in the wilderness. Perhaps you're stronger than I give you credit for. A great deal luckier too."

Now that was a laugh; sure I was lucky enough not to be killed by what I was eating all these years but even a idiot knew not to piss of the giant fish after the first time. Well, I couldn't help it! I was bored an that was a reasonable release from that boredom, especially since it hadn't done anything the dozens of times we had a tug of war. I guess I could say it was just me being unlucky that day, but it's been a while since I had come to understand something about life; just being unlucky once was enough.

I had no excuse; maybe being a child for a while, growing without any real worries except for what I would do the next day, changed a few things in me.

"I was being stupid, no need walk around it; I'm not a child." I complained for a bit; I was a fully grown woman when I had died, and though I liked being a kid again, I found them pretty stupid way too often.

"Maybe, but the way I see it, a four-year-old has the right to make a few mistakes." Satisfied with her work, she stood from her place in the sand to tower over me. "Now, let me give you a check up while the salve does it's work."

I didn't bother hiding my surprise when her palms began to glow a gentle green and the feeling of absolute bliss enveloped me when they met my head. It was like having my blood boil, the exciting happy kind, and I swear I could feel my bones right themselves and bond together while the rush of euphoria overwhelmed me. She was putting some of that green light, a strange warmth -a kind of magic, maybe life force?- into me but an even more curious thing was that I could feel something that came from _me_ resonating with whatever she was doing.

The rush of warmth wasn't just her trying to heal me with some... whatever strange magic or science that this was, it felt like she was trying to get my body to heal itself faster and she was using her own energy to tell mine what to do.

It felt wonderful.

"There... it looks like you're arm will be fine after all." She spoke with no small amount of satisfaction before it shifted to amusement. "Oh, you liked that? I guess it's safe to assume that you've never heard of the Turning Way before."

"The Turn Way?" There was something familiar in that word, something I've heard before. Hell, what she called the catfish, Namazu, seemed to strike a chord in my memory. The only reason I didn't say anything was that my broken arm finally registered.

"The Turn Way is the Art of Healing, little one." She began explaining, with all the patience of my high school history teacher. "It heals by exploiting the fact that spiritual pressure speeds up the body's natural recovery rate and can even strengthen the one being healed as well. It's not something I'm particularly skilled with, but it has its own uses especially when on the battlefield. You've been living alone for a while, and with your level or spiritual pressure, surely you've seen a hollow before. Turn Way makes engaging them so much safer, well for those of us who can't keep up at least."

There was something wrong with the scathingly sarcastic tone near the end but I didn't care about that. Those words held some meaning to me; spiritual pressure was Reiatsu, the Turn Way was Kaido, and the Hollows well, that was spoken in heavily accented english. And that reminded me that I knew this place. Maybe not the lake, but this world, where demons roamed and took away children who were too weak to defend themselves and those in power were little more than an organized band of killers. It was a place were the Germans were still assholes, the Spanish were pretty cool and the Japanese were as Samurai as they came.

I was in the world of Bleach, and damn if I wasn't fucked.

I admit with no shame that I would have fainted if it wasn't for the steady glow of power, _reiatsu,_ flowing into me.

"Are you okay, child? Don't go dying on me now that I've wasted some of my reiatsu healing you." The woman, most definitely a Shinigami then, spoke with equal parts worry and cheer. "You couldn't have that bad of an experience with a Hollow if you still have all your limbs attached. You seem like a strong little girl, I'm sure there's a story behind that face. But you've never encountered a hollow, have you? Something from your past life, perhaps?"

I couldn't fight the urge to flinch when she cupped my cheek but I found that I couldn't get very far. The smile on her face cracked, but I could tell she was enjoying this even if she meant well for the most part. A sardonic part of me couldn't really blame her.

I could imagine my expression; I felt like the world was crashing down around me when I all but confirmed exactly which afterlife I found myself it and of course the nice God of Death thought that it just had a particularly harrowing experience with something that quite literally ate souls for breakfast. I didn't, really the scariest thing I found since coming to Soul Society, if this place was where I thought it was, was the giant catfish that I routinely tried to catch but then I would have to explain exactly why I was so frightened when she mentioned the hollows, and that wasn't exactly going to fly.

"It's just scary, you know?" I began, unsure, but that was exactly what was needed to sell it. "If there are things even worse than that fish, then I don't know if I could handle it if I did see... what was it again? A hollow?"

"Don't worry about it, most of them aren't even that tough." She sat back down beside me, bringing me into a one-armed hugged while she held up her palm. Instead of a comforting green, her fingers burst with electric blue light as lightning began to crackle around her hand. "Usually it doesn't even take more than this to take care of most of them, unless we're talking about the Menos, but the don't really appear in Rokungai. You could probably take one on easily if you've been living on your own for a couple of years and if you were to become a shinigami then you'd be able to do some _real damage_."

"You think that a child would be able to take on those monsters?" I asked, breathlessly. The way she said those last two words was chilling to say the least "Are you crazy or something?"

I couldn't believe this woman, did she really think that children would be able to take on those... things? I mean, if I remembered correctly, then people aged differently, and people a hundred years old still looked as if they were around ten or twelve, but I hadn't even been her for a decade! Besides, I knew very little of hand to hand combat except for the honorable french martial art of running away and I was sure that I couldn't outrun those things if they could overtake cars.

I was snapped out of my thoughts when the woman laughed in response, pulling me closer as the lighting left her fingers and she wiped her eyes.

"That was great! It's been a while since anyone had the guts to talk to me like that!" She spoke in between breaths, a wide smile on her face. "I'll tell you what; I'm on a break right now, but I can tell that hanging around you would be fun, for a while at least. How would you like to be a student of mine?"

"Eh?" I had to try one last time but the smile on her face was downright sadistic. "Can I refuse?"

"Nope."

* * *

 **AN: Hi again. Same story as most on the site: I loved Bleach.I loved the concept, I loved most of the story, I loved the characters but I absolutely _loathed_ the ending, or the last two arcs. Bleach would have stayed in my solid Top 3 if it ended after Deicide, but the rest is history. **

**I've seen fics that start way back in the timeline, Soul Chess, Once More, so I've taken a page from them and tried starting WAY back.**

 **Please don't be shy, tell me what you think and that would help a lot.**

 **Thanks in advance!**


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